These muffins taste very decadently of rich, dark chocolate, yet they are surprisingly healthy. I first came across the original recipe, created by Thomas, on his interesting food blog called “Full of Plants”. His recipe is actually quite healthy as it is, but I wanted to try to eliminate any added sugars, preferring that any sugars be naturally occurring in the whole food ingredients. I also wanted to add walnuts, as I find they go really well with the other flavours present in the muffin, as well as being heart healthy, and I got rid of the white rice flour, as it doesn’t really provide any nutritional benefit and may contain unhealthy levels of arsenic. And, of course, I had to double the recipe because six muffins don’t go very far.
I’ve noticed that since we’ve been eating a more diverse range of whole foods, I have no desire to eat typical ready-made desserts…they just taste like sugar and cardboard to me. These muffins, however, aren’t too sweet, and they’re dense and full of flavour, almost like a muffin/brownie. They’re also full of flavonoids from the chocolate, Omega 3s from the walnuts, vitamin E, manganese, biotin, copper, magnesium, molybdenum, Vitamin B2, phosphorus and monounsaturated fats in the almond flour, potassium from the bananas, soluble fiber and minerals such as selenium, manganese, copper and magnesium and potassium in the dates, plus manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, iron, zinc, folate, Vitamin B1 and B5 from the oat flour…I think we can safely say these muffins are a deliciously healthy treat.
Double Chocolate Muffins
makes 12 muffins
Ingredients:
1 cup (90g) almond flour (ground, blanched almonds)
1 cup (90g) oat flour
6 tablespoons (44g) unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 ripe bananas
8 medjool dates, pitted
2/3 cup (156ml) almond milk (or coconut, or soy)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350°F and line a 12-muffin tin with muffin papers.
In the bowl of stand mixer, or in a large mixing bowl, break the bananas into pieces and mash using medium speed on the stand mixer, or with a fork in the bowl.
Add the almond milk, vanilla and the dates, either very finely chopped, or, as I like to do, blend the pitted dates with the almond milk using a hand-held stick blender.
Mix the mashed banana, dates, vanilla and almond milk together well.
Add all of the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips and walnuts, to the bowl, then blend well. You don’t have to worry about overmixing as there’s no gluten to get tough in this mixture.
Then gently stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts, and distribute batter evenly between the 12 muffins cups. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the tops are getting crusty, then move to a cooling rack. Once cooled, I like to freeze the muffins so they stay fresh tasting.
Printable Version:
Double Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup (90g) almond flour (ground, blanched almonds)
- 1 cup (90g) oat flour
- 6 tablespoons (44g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 3 ripe bananas
- 8 medjool dates, pitted
- ⅔ cup (156ml) almond milk (or coconut, or soy)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ cup bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks
- 1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and line a 12-muffin tin with muffin papers.
- In the bowl of stand mixer, or in a large mixing bowl, break the bananas into pieces and mash using medium speed on the stand mixer, or with a fork in the bowl.
- Add the almond milk, vanilla and the dates, either very finely chopped, or, as I like to do, blend the pitted dates with the almond milk using a hand-held stick blender.
- Mix the mashed banana, dates, vanilla and almond milk together well.
- Add all of the dry ingredients, except the chocolate chips and walnuts, to the bowl, then blend well. You don’t have to worry about overmixing as there’s no gluten to get tough in this mixture.
- Then gently stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts, and distribute batter evenly between the 12 muffins cups. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the tops are getting crusty, then move to a cooling rack. Once cooled, I like to freeze the muffins so they stay fresh tasting.
These look very delish Sam! You can get stevia sweetened chocolate chips, also non gmo by Krisda. I will be making these soon! Yum, yum. I recently made muffins with my new batch of students and forgot to add 270 g of brown sugar. They still rose nicely and were moist enough. They were surprisingly edible, however, a mashed banana or puréed date would have rounded out the flavour. All this to say that we could probably make very good muffins w/out the high ratio of sugar. Also students seem to find great amusement when the so called pros make mistakes.
Happy Mother’s Day!
That’s so funny about the brown sugar…maybe these “mistakes” are how some of the greatest discoveries have been made! :). I didn’t notice much difference either between the coconut sugar in the original recipe and the dates, and we actually liked these better without the rice flour.
Happy Mother’s Day to you too!
Great idea putting the dates in these to sweeten them! These sound like a great snack any time of day!
Yes we really like them, have you tried them with the walnuts yet?
Yes! They really add some good texture, I even like the berries in them.